


The time Draco lost his poise and it was definitely because Harry Potter had cursed him.

by MarigoldWritesThings



Series: The New Guy and other short stories [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 8th year, Hogwarts, M/M, Post-War, Tumblr Prompt, clumsy!draco, some french swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 12:43:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13570818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarigoldWritesThings/pseuds/MarigoldWritesThings
Summary: Tumblr promptDraco was always the picture of grace. Suddenly, he spills his tea, he breaks his quills, and he walks into walls.And it's all Potter's fault, that bloody git.





	The time Draco lost his poise and it was definitely because Harry Potter had cursed him.

Draco Malfoy was the pinnacle of grace, if he said so himself. Anyone would be, really, if they were trained in proper etiquette before they could comprehend what the word even entailed. He was scolded for slouching before his legs could fully support him and praised with sweets and kind words when he managed not to get soup all the way down his front at the tender age of five. Recently, however, his equilibrium seemed… skewed. Off balance. And no matter how many times he re-read The Gentleman's Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness (Muggles got some things right), no matter how many hours he spent re-establishing himself, training his face into the mask of superiority, forcing his limbs into the lazy, slow, dignified posture his father skilled into him, he still tripped walking up the stairs, or dropped his tea, or broke his quill sending droplets of ink into his own face. In short: Draco was making a fool of himself, and Malfoys were no fools. 

Well, there were times, more recently than not, when Malfoys were definitely fools; lodging crazy people and standing on the wrong side of history, but this particular Malfoy was given a rare second chance and was determined not to squander it.   
This was becoming progressively tougher as he saw Potter leaning casually against the wall, chatting animatedly to Granger, her bushy hair hiding the majority of his face from view. It was a close call, but most definitely an improvement – her hair was massive but at least uniformly so, whereas Potter’s… 

Draco lost his train of thought as he, yet again, tripped over thin air and fell face first into a wall. An unmistakable snort or derision rung through the air. 

‘Potter,’ Draco managed with a voice as steady as a child coming off a merry-go-round, ‘Be so kind and find if you’re needed elsewhere.’

‘I’m just fine right here, thanks. The view is amusing.’ Potter was his usual insufferable self, and Draco wished more than he wished for anything for a long time that he too could be normal at this very moment. He huffed, hoping it conveyed his emotions accurately, and stalked away in a fashion that would put the late Snape to shame. 

Oh, that memory still stung, and he pushed it down with all the other ones he didn’t dare examine in the light of day and only briefly reviewed at night. 

Pansy was in the Slytherin common room when he got in. A single, perfectly plucked raised eyebrow told him his face betrayed his discomfiture. 

‘Potter get you down again? Honestly, darling, he is so very common, you really need to find a better target for your obsessions.’

‘I’m not obsessing,’ Draco hissed in response, ‘he was just there when I… tripped.’

A cruel smirk bloomed on her face. Of course, she was enjoying this. She always did, when he was uncomfortable. Slytherins made terrible friends.

‘That seems to happen a lot recently, non?’ 

Draco rolled his eyes at her piss-poor attempts at adding French to her every day vocabulary. 

‘Va te faire enculer. T'es rien qu'un petit connard,’ Draco countered and watched her face pinch with some satisfaction. Really, she couldn’t hold a candle to his command of five (FIVE!) languages. 

‘My point is, dear,’ and oh boy was her voice full of poison now, ‘that these little accidents you seem to be having only happen around Potter.’ 

Draco mulled it over and arrived at no conclusions. ‘So?’

Pansy threw him an exasperated look and waived her arm around with the grace of a queen, ‘So, if this only happens around Potter, don’t you think he could be the reason?’

Draco’s stomach dropped. Oh course! ‘Do you think he cursed me?’ Pansy’s expression hardened, lips pursed tightly, creasing around just slightly. She would not be pleased to see this – a single one of those lines could be called a wrinkle. Draco stored the knowledge away safely, certain it would come in useful. 

‘I think you have a crush on him, and it’s making you stumble like an enamoured teenager,’ she answered as if it was a normal, every day thing to say, and it was Draco’s turn to purse his lips into a thin line. He wondered if he too had wrinkles. 

‘Your conclusion is axiomatically incorrect.’ 

‘Why so?’ Pansy was looking at his lips intently now. He knew it – he had wrinkles. That jar of skin lotion from his mother was a dud. How infuriating. 

‘Because I don’t have a crush, on Potter!’ he all but yelled, keeping his lips tight and the volume down. If this was anyone else, they would be scurrying away. Pansy only waved at him dismissively. 

‘Sure, sure, ma chérie. Whatever you say.’ 

Draco felt his blood boil at her improper use of a pronoun. This was however a conversation they had too many times for him to bother, again. 

‘Mes coquilles sur ton front,’ he threw back at her, walking away and preying she wouldn’t understand. 

 

The next day went much the same. Armed with the certainty that Potter had somehow, with his limited thought capacity, managed to curse him, Draco threw angry but dignified glances at the Gryffindor table throughout breakfast. That is until Potter looked up, their eyes met, and Draco spilled his special morning tea blend across the table, earning himself angry scoffs from the Slytherins in his immediate vicinity. This, naturally, only strengthened his resolve. How dare Potter curse him! Isn’t he meant to be the Saint? Is Draco could only find proof, he could finally show everyone what sort of a man their Exalted Saviour truly is. 

Not that anybody would really care what happens to an ex Death Eater. If anything, they’d probably put Potter-the-Wonder even higher on a pedestal. 

Draco attempted to push those thoughts away, to stiff them deep within himself together with those of Snape, and of the last year, and of how much of a git he really has been throughout his entire education, but they left a sour taste in his mouth. 

He could still taste them sitting in Potions classroom, as for the first time in his entire learning experience he failed at the class. The Pepperup Potion he was brewing looked stagnant and yellow, instead of the vibrant red it was meant to become. Usually meticulous with his work space, Draco mixed up his crushed Bicorn Horn with the salamander blood, resulting in adding it into the potion way earlier than he should have. Now, an hour and a half later, stirring the potion clockwise and missing yet another anticlockwise turn, he was so furious at whatever it was Potter had done to him that he was certain to confront him the moment the class was dismissed. 

That moment came all too soon, and the fire within him was stoked further by Slughorn’s shocked disappointment when the professor came to check his work. ‘Better luck next time, eh lad?’ the man said, patting him casually on the shoulder. The heaviness of his hand felt more like a slap than encouragement. 

So he waited until they were dismissed, and subtly cast a Diffindo at Potter’s bag. It split, books spilling on the floor, becoming coated in ink, and the boy-saviour waved his friends ahead while he knelt down to pick them up. Potter grumbled angrily to himself as he attempted to remove the ink from where it hit the worst. 

Draco waited until the last of students vacated the classroom before approaching. 

‘Something wrong with your bag there, Potter?’

‘What do you want, Malfoy? Trying to embarrass yourself some more?’ Draco’s smirk disappeared promptly at the words. If that’s how Potter was going to be, he was done playing coy.

‘What have you done to me?’ 

Potter lifted his head up, expression puzzled. ‘I didn’t do anything to you.’ 

‘Oh please,’ Draco snorted (rather inelegantly, to his own chagrin). ‘Stop playing and fess up. I know you did something. That’s the only explanation.’

Unless you count what Pansy had said, which he didn’t, so it didn’t matter. 

‘Malfoy, would you stop acting like a prat and leave me be? Or, if you are so adamant on staying, would you at least help me with the books?’ 

The request gave Draco pause. He had much, much better things to do than help Potter with the ink-stained mess, but the Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness clearly stated one was not ought to ignore a direct request. A silent voice somewhere within him supplied that he was the cause of the mess in the first place, and begrudgingly he obliged, sliding down in front of Potter, careful to keep his knees away from the dirty floor. 

It earned him a surprised look from Potter, who immediately stopped working on what could have been his copy of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 7, however the ink splattered cover made this impossible to verify. 

‘I’m being helpful,’ Draco murmured, ignoring his heart suddenly beating faster than after any Quidditch match he ever played, ‘now would you tell me what you have done to me?’

‘I told you, I didn’t do anything. No idea what you’re on about.’ Potter looked innocent, and honest, but Draco was a Slytherin and knew first-hand how rarely those emotions were founded. 

‘How else would you explain this, then? Do go on, defend yourself.’

Potter laughed a short little startled laugh. 

‘Defend myself of what? Are you planning to hex me?’

‘Well how else would you explain why I can’t seem to stop behaving like a maniac every time I see your face?’ 

Draco realised very quickly how those words sounded, but the Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness clearly stated one was not to backtrack on their own words, yet one look like a fool. 

Potter smiled a lazy, wide smile, and Draco couldn’t look away from those lips that made him feel absolutely nothing at all, and Pansy had it all wrong, and he would make sure to tell her at length as soon as he saw her. 

‘So, what you’re saying is when you’re around me you start behaving like a blubbering idiot? Malfoy, some would think you had a crush on me.’ 

Draco watched as those lips that made him feel nothing moved, and for no related reason a shiver went down his spine. Then a thought entered his head, one that would be worrying if it wasn’t for how little of anything he was feeling.

He should kiss Potter. 

That would show him for cursing Draco. It would show Pansy, once and for all, just how wrong she was. Yes, this glorious plan had no drawbacks – he should kiss Potter, and this would all be over. 

So he did. 

Their lips crushed together, startling a surprised moan from Harry (because really, he couldn’t call him Potter when their lips were touching like that), and Draco very quickly realised the flaw with his plan. But before he could process what was happening, before the edges of his vision could stop being blurry, before anything at all could be achieved, Harry kissed back. 

The world around them dissipated as the lips he’d been obscenely staring at tentatively opened and enveloped his own. They were warm, and softer than he thought they would be, and the realisation that yes, he thought of this before made everything feel right. The world has corrected itself, his horizon straight for the first time in months. The kiss deepened, becoming needy and faster. Draco heard a low growl and it took a second before he registered that it was his own. 

That was enough. He had to stop. He pulled away, immediately regretting the action, eyes trained on Potter’s lips which had become redder and swollen and Draco thought I did that and a modicum of pride washed over him. More than even the kiss, the thought terrified him, so he got up and righted his clothes. 

‘What the hell was that?’ Potter’s voice was rough, and still filled with want, and Draco almost moaned at the sound of it. 

‘What was what?’ his face, so used to it, was already covered in a smirk, attempting to hide his uncertainty.

‘You just kissed me. What was that?’

‘Did I now?’ Draco summoned every ounce of grace he possessed as he walked towards the door. He had to get away. Now.

‘What the hell do you mean ‘did I’? You just kissed me!’ Potter’s voice was becoming dangerous and hysterical as he rose up from the ground, the books laying in-between them, forgotten. 

‘Is that right? Well, tell your friends. Let’s see who’ll believe you.’

Draco walked out of the classroom, leaving a gobsmacked Potter staring behind him. The tables have finally turned, Draco thought, as he strolled away without a shred of clumsiness.

**Author's Note:**

> Really hope you enjoyed this! If yes, do come and find me on tumblr https://marigoldwritesthings.tumblr.com/  
> this is part 1 of anon prompts - if you would like me to write something for you, let me know and I'll do my best.


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